The local opinion about Chinese cars is that they only use enough metal to hang the paint onto.

I am not sure, but I think I already mentioned something similar.
But let's not pettifog about it.

Interesting, I did not know that it was such a big thing.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/automotive-industry/chinese-made-cars-in-us-market-a3786571662/

China has its fingers in almost everything you touch nowadays, so why would you not buy one of their cars?

When someone buys something, almost anything, there are many factors that have to be taken into account

Some just want cheap because they do not have the money for anything else.
Some prefer higher quality and are prepared to pay for it.
Some buy according to their needs, a pickup, family car, high economy run around, van.
And some buy just because the bloody thing looks pretty.

If the Chinese products fit your needs, why not buy it? Cellphones, tee-shirts, motorbikes, even MAGA caps were made in China.

Many years ago my wife had a little business selling used clothes. Where she bought the packets they advertised as GENUINE IMPORTED USA products. Most of the clothes were made in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, China, Philippines, even some made here in Honduras. Only about ten percent were made in the good old USA.

I remember a long time ago when the same thing was happening with Japanese products.

If Trump wins and inexplicably prevents on "blood bath" he promises a 100% tariff, but they would still be cheap. — Fooloso4

Do Buicks and Lincoln get built outside of the USA?

There are always dangers in this universe. Wandering black holes, gamma ray bursts, solar flares, and of course, a possible nearby alien civilization more powerful than oneself. — RogueAI

Yes indeed, all of those do exist. Not all stars have solar flares as intense as our sun, and it would make for an even more ideal place for life to evolve.
How many times has humanity had to deal with the rest of these dangers? Why would it be different for them?
But I am glad that you think there are others out there, even if you believe that they will be bad guys that we need to defend ourselves from.

My posts are predicated on the aliens you were talking about earlier: aliens who can communicate by fermions and neutrinos. If you're talking about aliens who aren't technologically advanced then obviously none of what I said applies. — RogueAI

Technical advancement is a funny thing, it tends to go in the direction of needs. On a world that has a high population and a late start in technology, they might be 100% towards feeding and housing their people. I cannot imagine the cost of a tight beam of neutrinos being directed at a distant planet would cheep thing to accomplish for a planet. Even if the know how to do it they would probably spend their resources creating better methods of producing food..

Concepts of defense and self-preservation are going to be universal. — RogueAI

I might agree with self preservation if you agree that it means keeping yourself alive and reproducing. Defense implies there is something to protect from, what if there are no dangers where the super intelligent being live. Would the instinct still develop?

We must look for other explanations for the Fermi paradox, — Linkey

Another reason they don't come looking for us, we only have 2 legs and are not cute enough to be pets. :rofl:

And probably, imo, "they" are not even – are no longer – "species" but instead spacefaring AI probes (operationally independent of their long ago left behind biological makers).. — 180 Proof

You will be assimilated whether you fucking like it or not. :rofl:

I think any space-faring species will be somewhat curious, and any species that has climbed on top of the evolutionary ladder is going to be somewhat concerned with self-preservation, so yes, they're going to want to know that their neighbors are up to and they're going to spend a fair amount of money to find out. — RogueAI

Judging other species by human standards is the first mistake, even human tribes have shown to have great differences in their way of thinking, seeing and doing things.

Is there any guarantee that other highly intelligent and knowledgeable species would be space fairing?
Even if the greatest members of an alien species are capable of space travel, there is no guarantee that the rest of the population will let them do it. NASA was almost shut down several times because of the expenses and only a few private ones are running.

If a very intelligent alien species develops on a planet that does not have the natural minerals and elements necessary for space travel, what would they do?

If they developed on a world where there were no predators and that they were at the top of the ladder from day one, would they have defensive reflexes like humans do?

To call humans space fairing is a bit of a misnomer I think, even if Musk make it to Mars in a couple of years.
I know several very intelligent people that have little or no curiosity at all, so we cannot even say that it is common in humans.

They won't send probes to another galaxy, but they would certainly investigate nearby planets with biosignatures. — RogueAI

So you think that it might be possible for life to develop on more that one planet in the same solar system? I did not say that they would look for life in other galaxies, just in other parts of their own.

And one last possibility, how about a very intelligent race that has no appendages. They could quite easily conquer their own world, but operate tool? How would they become technologically advanced? There might be hundreds of planets containing intelligent life out there, why would we be so sure that they can or want to communicate with other species? Maybe there are even others like us, listening to the skies and wondering why no one is calling but do not know how to receive the messages either. I use WhatsApp, you use Telegram, how do we arrange a meeting?

Man should stop thinking the universe runs in his image, cuase it just don't.

If they can communicate by fermion or neutrino, it would be trivial to send probes to nearby planets with biosignatures and keep an eye on them. — RogueAI

Just how trivial do you think it might be? The ability to do something like sending probes to other parts of the universe in no way implies the need, want, or even financial capability to do so.

As I asked earlier, are you prepared to spend money on something that might not give any results or benefit?.

There is another good reason that might explain why the have not communicated with us, maybe there goods have convinced them that they are alone in the universe so they are not interest in looking.

They would still know of radio and remember their own days of listening to the skies with radio telescopes. It wouldn't take much to beam powerful radio signals to all the nearby habitable planets. — RogueAI

Yes, they probably would.

One question though, would you be interested in investing in an expensive blue-ray machine just in-case a company in Russia might release a movie with that technology in the next 20 years? Or possible buy a wax cylinder manufacturing company in-case some music company plans to release songs on them in a couple of decades.

Maybe they feel the same way.

So, if we count the possible satisfaction of the victims as bookmark for calculation, is there ever going to be a chance of breaking even. Even with monumental expenditure of time and effort I doubt that many expectations will be met.

How, for instance, could the damage done by the internment of US Japanese citizens during WW2 be in compensated any form?
If we try to figure out exactly what the present generations have lost because of that, what would we find?

To the point: the dead are dead, and unless you can make the dead laugh, reparations to them is nonsense-talk. — tim wood

Agreed.

To the living, assistance to overcome the costs of the effects of prejudice. — tim wood

And how to calculate the cost of previous generation is the biggest problem, recent events might be easier.
Could the word of the affected count as evidence of their suffering compared to others? Would statistical comparisons give a better idea of the effects?
Just how far are they willing to go to call an action racial?

Afro Americans were given a lower class of education for generations, that led them to be able to perform lower paid jobs, which in turn made it impossible for them to acquire a house, this meant that they had to live in low rent neighborhoods with low quality schools and repeat the cycle in the next generation.

How far back is it possible to go and still calculate the difference that would have been made in their lives today. If an Afro American was given a good education three generations ago, would comparing that family to the rest of the Afro American population give us an idea of how bad the damage is? Or would it be better going back further or just one generation?

I have no idea how anyone could be compensated for the loss nor what assistance could be given.

If not for the generous and more than generous gifts of the universe, where do you suppose you would be? — tim wood

That is sort of like a father that has just shot one son in the stomach and the other in the head, then saying "If it was not for me, you would not be here to die."

The are millions of ways to die, but only one to get a life. That is not fair.

Yes. Or maybe we have received their signals but our systems lack the sensitivity and/or bandwidth (maybe they use neutrinos rather than EM waves) to distinguish those signals from the cosmic background noise. — 180 Proof

Yes, that is basically what I said to L'éléphant. But it might even be possible that they use fermions. That would be a more appropriate.

But we are referring to the same universe you and I exist in. That's what I meant when I said, there's not much signals except the radioactivity because the universe is made of those elements. — L'éléphant

The fact that we have not received any signals does not mean that they are not out there, it just means that we have not received signals. We are in no position to say that we know all about the possible methods of communication between the stars.
What if they are still using smoke signals, live under water, have invented some sort of faster than light method, live on a planet that never has a direct line of sight with the earth, or are telepathic. Maybe they don't believe in extraterrestrial beings and see no point in trying to communicate.Just because they live in the same universe does not mean that they are like us in any way. Or maybe they just don't care.

I think that one of the biggest problems would be in the alien home world itself. It is doubtful that very many of the radio type signals leaving the earth are actually being received by anyone out there, so it is doubtful that they even know we are here.
Contrary to what a lot of people believe it is probably not that easy to detect soap opera transmissions over in the next solar system unless they are really trying. To reach over the distance between stars a very high powered, tight bean signal would need to transmitted over a long period of time directly at the target planet for them to detect it and figure out it was a signal to them. But they would need to be listening in the right direction as well. How much would it cost to be either listening for or transmitting these signals. Do you think that the earths economy would support such endeavors?
Then they would have to overcome language barriers first, to translate the data into something recognizable.

Their method of communication might be different. And yet, radioactivity is the universal language of the entire universe. — L'éléphant

You suppose, entirely without any base, that they are at least as advanced as we are.

There are 118 known elements in the universe, 92 found on Earth. Apparently, if there undiscovered elements, our scientists could predict what they are. — L'éléphant

Since it is actually just about a hundred years ago that other galaxies were proven to exist, it might just be there are many more that they could not predict yet.

At any rate, having this knowledge is in no way a guarantee that we have similar methods of communication. I thought that I had made that obvious in the comment about the glass and the deaf mute people on the other side of the wall. But you could also try giving that data to a tribesman in the Amazon and see how far you get with communication.

If aliens exist, they don't have much freedom as to what radioactivity they could emit -- they don't have the smorgasbord of elements to combine into their supersignal — L'éléphant

And exactly what is their "supersignal" going to be like? And what would we need to do to receive it?

It could peek into the distant past of 13.7 B years. — L'éléphant

It could also turn out to be a glass on the wall of a deaf/mute couple discussing Einstein's theories, absolutely useless.
If we do not know their method of communication, we might never stumble upon the thousands of cold calls their insurance companies have been making to us. We might even have blocked them without knowing it.

Extra question: Is the Fermi paradox actually a paradox? Or just two statements about different topics?

The general form of the remedy as it occurs to me is to provide for each individual an opportunity to recover what was taken. And again in general terms, what was taken was opportunity itself. — tim wood

As individuals in modern times, trying to reverse in some way the injustices of racism to these people would be a long way from appeasing the horrors of the actual uprooting their ancestors. One would be a way to compensate for recent events, the other would have to address the reasons or causes of them being placed in the recent situation

I recall pictures from 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army escorting nine students into their high school. — tim wood

I remember in the late 60's having a police car following the school bus as it started its new route to pick up kids in Afro American neighborhoods as well the the white kids from theirs. None of the Afro American kids were going to the white schools so the buses had to make 2 drop-offs. It was not a comfortable situation for a teenager.

But I still remember that in the 3 schools I attended in the USA, all students and teachers were white. But there was still discrimination of many sorts. Those from old families looked down their noses at almost everyone. The reasonably well off looked down their noses at the white trash. The city dwellers, the swamp and bayou living Cajuns had different points of view. Outsiders, like my family, were welcomed mostly as long as you did not go against their way of life. I got people angry sometimes for failing to follow their rules and earned a couple of bloody noses too.

And there were still "whites only" signs in a lot of shop windows.

Personally I think that almost everyone has been discriminated against in some way or other, the universe is not a fair place. In one town in England I had to go to a different school than my best friend across the road. Just because I lived across some imaginary line I was sent to a school and lost by best mate, who can I sue?

Have you ever heard of this gentleman? Some of his words were quite prophetic, but by today's standards, racist.

https://anth1001.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/enoch-powell_speech.pdf

Reparations are usually about either a fine/punishment, or an attempt to restore the victim to some status quo ante. — tim wood

I kind of agree with you here, both in the definition and that it will not be easy to implement.

The idea of fining or punishing those with some sort of responsibility in slavery seems remote, all are dead. To pass the bill to their families would be the next step then maybe, but they are now mostly far removed from the fortunes made in those days. It would be difficult to prove that their wealth is a direct result of slavery in most cases.
To try and pass the bill to anyone that had in some way been benefited by slavery would mean that even the decedents of the peasants that went to work in the cotton factories would have to pay.
To say that a whole country is responsible and that the governments should pay the bill means that the everyday person in the street would have his taxes used for something that he has no responsibility for.
A very difficult problem indeed.

To attempt to restore the victim to some status quo ante would in my opinion be even more complicated. Even if their ancestors were traced and the victims were offered the chance to live the life that they would have occupied in the present if slavery had not sidetracked them, most would be a lot worse off than they are now.

On a slightly different note, has anyone ever heard of cases of claims for reparations being made against the African slavers that did a lot of the capturing of the people then sold them to the white men, or the slavers that captured and used them even before the white man appeared?

I make Mancunians responsible for the tomatina party, especially Sir2u. — javi2541997

You can blame them all you want, I have not seen another one for at least 40 years. :lol: :rofl:

If I had to choose a fruit representing philosophy, I would go for a coconut. — javi2541997

Maybe you are right, coconuts either ripen on the tree or not at all. Not like other fruits that will still ripen as long as they are cut after maturity. Coconuts just rot away if not used.

While on the topic, I have about 300 - 500 coconuts for sale every couple of weeks. $1 each.

A herd animal, by the looks. — AmadeusD

He wants to bang a herd??????? :gasp:

Can I just second that motion! :rofl:

I confess to being just an utmost humble servant of our Almighty Master, Lord of both worlds, and Creator of this universe. — Tarskian

All rise for the Flying Spaghetti Monster/

The solution is: no civil marriage, no cohabitation, no children, and preferably no sex (both in China and) in the West. That avoids serious legal problems for both men and women. That is why this lifestyle policy is clearly in everybody's best interest. — Tarskian

If enough of people like you follow this advise the world will be a much better place for the rest of us.

Close to half of the population will live through a harrowing court case, called "divorce". It is a byproduct of civil marriage. No civil marriage means no divorce court case.

But then again, I have also pointed out that you can avoid many of these problems by moving your private life outside the West. — Tarskian

It is just as you say here in the west, maybe we should all do as they do in the east. No divorce needed, just stone them to death.

RIP Alain Delon

Another one bites the dust.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/alain-delon-frances-flawed-screen-064114112.html

I’m not looking for advice, but simply to say that, maybe, philosophy, does not work in real situations. Or, maybe it work too well? Is philosophy the real truth-teller? — Rob J Kennedy

Philosophy is not a problem solver, it is a way of think that can be used to solve problems.

Any union of people in bad faith, whether a job, club or marriage is bad for your mental health.
Give it up and find something that that will make life pleasant.

Plants seem to desire sunlight when they move towards it. — praxis

A desire, which is basically an emotion, would mean that the being had a feeling of need or maybe an inclination towards something.

Plants only react to the changes in their environment.

Does it relate to the desire for consciousness? — Vera Mont

Is it even possible to have desires without consciousness?

RIP Jerry Fuller. The writer of so many great songs.



https://uk.news.yahoo.com/jerry-fuller-songwriter-whose-hit-113043618.html

The badly attached 10" I-beams are always in the ceiling. — Vera Mont

They would not be able to fall on the people if they were in the floor, and that would not be tension building as they wait to be rescued. Sci-Fi is still fiction even if the authors have made it as realistic as possible, it has to be exciting to sell.

Not quite following what would bend a convex support arch, but okay. — Vera Mont

High pressure or vacuum are terrible forces, they can bend or pull apart almost anything if it is not strong enough.
If you look at this image you will see that they try to keep the internal support beams straight as much as possible. On submarines and I would suppose star-ships the beams would be specially made in the form of the hull but they would not use curved beams for internal support.

Why do curved spaceships have so many straight steel beams in the ceiling and why do the beams fall down so easily? — Vera Mont

Same reason as ships and planes, for structural force. Curved beams are used to hold the outer plating but it is not a good idea to have curved support beams inside, the bend too easily.

As to why the fall, it would not be exciting if everything stayed in place would it? The same as sparks flying out of electrical equipment and in the next scene everything is normal and working.

Not really. They never tell you who or what the aliens are praying to or invoking or whatever they're doing when they're alone in their cabin with a burning candle, chanting or deep in some kind of trance. — Vera Mont

I think that most movies base their aliens and their customs on human expectations and ingrained beliefs.
Some scientists seem to believe that the need for the existence of a higher being is innate in humans and many authors try to pass that on to the aliens they create. Others create aliens based on basic fears of humans to make them appear more threatening to the readers or viewers, fear and scary are good for sales.

Personally I believe that if any alien ever gets here the must be smart enough to realize that there are no higher beings.

Another question I cannot find an answer to is why space traveling beings are depicted with claws or tentacles that can never have been used to create the spaceships they ride around in.

Has anyone else here had a sense that what they were experiencing in early life wasn't truly real or that it was highly stripped down?

Or is that natural when one hasn't yet accepting things as they seem to be? — TiredThinker

I think that would depend on how old you are. As a kid in the late 50's and early 60's I was out and about in reality, others have mentioned the same thing. We saw reality all the time. The only problem for many was the size of that reality, how far you managed to get from home. Obviously then, where we could not go we did not know first hand. So in some ways it was a limited reality.

Kids nowadays have the ability to see more through the different internet medias than we ever imagined. But it is always once or twice removed from reality. A lot of kids today have never thought about playing in puddles while it rains, and most parents are too protective to let them even if they did think about it.

Maybe that is what you mean.

Why do all the deities in the explored galaxy like to be invoked by an open flame? — Vera Mont

What exactly do you mean by "deities"? Could you give an example maybe?

Say good morning to your new Prime Minister, lads. — javi2541997

I am still so glad I left England when I did, that place is fucked up.

The VAT has to be reduced, and the price of a pint of beer will be £1 from now on. — javi2541997

I remember when we used to go out with three quid and go home very happy (drunk), well fed and sometimes even with a bird after dancing all night. We all got pissed off when the price went up to 10 pence a pint. Them was the days mate....

Sir2u has to be the next Chancellor of Oxford University to teach Spanish there. — javi2541997

Porque me está molestando con esto, puesto de basura. Dame el puesto de primer ministro y rapidito arreglo el país.
Y la mitad que van a este universidad ni saben bien el inglés.

On the other hand, Plato argues that there cannot be a dog that eats the most, because there is always a dog that eats more. — javi2541997

Does infinity actually mean that there is always one more, or does it just mean the possibility of it?

There doesn't have to be any surplus, as this is done once. The task is that the philosopher is to define in some way all the amounts of food and hence all the dogs, that they don't leave some dogs out. As no dog eats the same amount, then it's easy for the goddes to put the dogs in an growing or decreasing line based on their amount of food. — ssu

Ok, so if there is no surplus and no dog that goes without food then there has to be one that will eat more than the rest and one that will eat less.

The only other option would be an infinite amount of food and an infinite number of dogs. And as you said there is a limited area in Greece, so that does not seem likely.

And even if there were an infinite number of dogs, there would still have to be the one that eats less than any other dog.